Biophysics, MS

专业介绍

The Biophysics Program admits students to the PhD program only; it does not offer admission to a terminal master’s degree. A master’s degree may be earned under certain circumstances by students enrolled in the PhD program. For more information, see the Biophysics Handbook.

Biophysics is an interdisciplinary PhD program in the biosciences. It brings together students from diverse backgrounds (including biology, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, bioengineering, computational biology, neuroscience, cell biology, and so on) who are interested in research at the intersection of these disciplines.

Our broad interdepartmental program includes nearly 70 faculty trainers from departments across five schools and colleges at UW–Madison: the College of Letters & Science, the College of Agricultural & Life Sciences, the College of Engineering, the School of Medicine and Public Health, and the School of Pharmacy. This highly collaborative environment provides a wide range of opportunities, including protein structure/function, and engineering; nucleic acid and membrane biophysics; neuroscience; virology; and synthetic and systems biology applied to both bacterial and eukaryotic organisms. These research areas share the goal of understanding biological systems in physical and mechanistic terms, utilizing advanced quantitative instrumental methods, and often integrating computation and machine learning. An overview of our research areas is available on our website.

UW–Madison is a hub of excellence in structural biology, equipped with major facilities, including the National Magnetic Resonance Facility, the CryoEM Research Center, and the Midwest Center for Cryo-Electron Tomography. Trainers at these centers provide outstanding research opportunities for students aiming to become experts in the application and/or development of structural biology.

Furthermore, many other accessible facilities and equipment in our trainers’ laboratories offer advanced training in spectroscopy, microscopy, single-molecule imaging, high-throughput methods, Artificial Intelligence, and the integration of experimental and computational techniques used for analyzing and modeling macromolecules and biological systems.

The Biophysics Program houses the Molecular Biophysics Training Program (MBTP), an NIH National Research Service Award (T32) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The MBTP offers fellowships to twelve graduate students each year, funding interdisciplinary training at the intersection of the biological and physical sciences.

Biophysics is a diverse and collaborative scientific community whose goal is to prepare students from diverse academic backgrounds with rigorous interdisciplinary and quantitative training for careers in research and teaching across academia, industry, and other fields. Additionally, the program is flexible in its course requirements, emphasizing excellence in research and allowing coursework selection to be customized to meet a student’s specific research interests and needs.